Over the last several centuries, science has advanced by leaps and bounds. Just in the last 200 years, our understanding of the structure of atoms has improved dramatically. At first, many scientists thought that they were the smallest constituents of matter (atomic literally means irreducible or unsplittable). Then electrons were discovered and scientists modeled atoms as a pudding, with electron "plums" in it. It was not long before they were able to discover that the distribution of charge within an atom does not support that model, and next atoms were modeled as electrons orbiting the nucleus. Again though, this model was frustrated by quantum physics, and our current model has an atomic nucleus surrounded by an "electron cloud" that is not actually an orbital, but a probability space within which the electrons are most likely to be located. No one believes in the plum pudding model anymore, and while diagrams often represent atoms using the orbital model, no one in serious science actually believes in that model either. As old science has been disproved, scientists have moved on to more proven and supported science. This is true in all fields except for one.
In medicine, we still have this theory that diseases are caused by mysterious miasms. Many people believe that burning a certain fungus on or near the skin (yes, this does often cause painful burns) can cure diseases. There is a whole discipline of medicine that believes that pressure or pin pricks on the skin can cure anything. There is even a discipline that believes merely imagining a disease leaving the body will make it actually do so. I thought medical science was past all of this. I thought that we established more than a century ago that most diseases were caused by viruses or bacteria, which can and have been observed under microscopes and in cultures, not some mystical, undetectable magic "miasms." I thought that we invented medicines and medical practices to fight these infections, instead of using shamanistic practices without any record of verifiable success. In short, I thought that medical science had advanced the same way classical physics has. It turns out I was very wrong.
Homeopathy is a medical discipline that believes disease is caused by miasms. Despite the fact that the existence of viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens, not to mention proven explanations for the causes of other non-pathogenic diseases, like cancer, has been well proven, plenty of people still believe in these totally undetectable magical disease causing things called miasms. And worse, they pay real money for water or alcohol preparations that at one time might possibly have had a few molecules of some "medicine" in it, before it was diluted out to the point that modern science has proven that most homeopathic "drugs" don't even have a single molecule of the original, supposedly curative substance in them. (Which is actually a good thing, given that many of them are potent poisons in high enough concentration to have any effect at all.) The only thing homeopathy is actually successful in is the placebo effect and convincing seriously sick patients to forgo life saving treatments long enough that they die from preventable causes.
Most other forms of "alternative medicine" are more believable than homeopathy, but most of them also have a host of evidence against them. For instance, Traditional Chinese Medicine, including acupuncture and moxibustion (that thing about burning the fungus) have potentially believable biological explanations for their claims. Acupuncture is supposed to stimulate nerves in ways that aid the immune system (though, the original explanations involving the flow of life energy are a rather less supported by biology). The problem is that it does not actually work. This is not a matter of modern medicine attacking it to reduce competition. Plenty of research, including many clinical trials, has shown that getting stuck with needles in special life energy or nerve points is no more effective than water or saline injections with a hypodermic needle in the normal places injections are given. (It does turn out that getting injected is actually one of the most powerful placebos, but that does not justify the prices of Traditional Chinese Medicine.) Still, many people choose to believe in these practices, despite the fact that they have repeatedly been disproved. As with homeopathy, aside from the placebo effect, Traditional Chinese Medicine does little more than convince people to die by forgoing proven life saving medical treatment.
Even treatments like Chiropractic have questionable claims, though, Chiropractic has some proven benefits for spinal health, and it has been proven to relieve muscle pain associated with spinal misalignment. There is not significant evidence that Chiropractic can cure cancer, but there do seem to be some health benefits from it, though those may largely be related to the fact that pain relief tends to relieve harmful stress.
Altogether, we almost live in a highly scientifically enlightened age. The big exception is the field of medicine, where a lot of people seem to take the most important part of science, their own health, for granted, and treat it as something of so little value that they will ignore all of the warnings and choose to be guinea pigs for already disproved treatments. I suppose this could be regarded as natural selection against poor judgment, but I think the government bears some of the blame as well. Alternative medicine is the only medical discipline where the burden is to disprove, instead of to prove. In modern medicine, there are strict government requirements on proving that a medication or procedure is reasonably safe before it can be administered to the general public. In alternative medicine, largely anything is permitted so long as it is not proven ineffective or harmful under extremely rigorous trials (about the same rigor required of modern medicine to prove its claims, which no one is willing to fund for alternative medicine), and the burden of proof lies on no one in particular, making it very difficult to prosecute and shut down all the quacks and charlatans. I am not opposed to finding new medical treatments, especially ones that might cause consternation in the modern medical community (they need to get stirred up about things once in a while, and some serious competition would do the medical industry a world of good), but it is beyond absurd to place strict restrictions on safety and evidence of claims on the only scientifically based medical community without doing the same for all of the medical disciplines that are not backed by science. I mean, allowing faith healing is one thing, but allowing practices that have been proven harmful or potentially harmful is another altogether.
No comments:
Post a Comment